15,428 new voters register in Central MA

Residents flock to the Election Commission office in City Hall on Oct. 17, the last day to register to vote in the presidential election.

A presidential election year, a hard-fought U.S. Senate campaign and get-out-the-vote drives in some local races combined to produce a late surge of 15,428 newly registered voters in Central Massachusetts over the last two months, according to the latest figures.

The majority of the new registrants in Worcester County, more than 9,100 people, chose not to enroll in any political party.

Democrats picked up 4,874 new registered voters across the county for a total of 150,126 heading into Tuesday's election, while Republicans increased their ranks modestly by 1,416 to 65,921.

The latest voter counts released Thursday by Secretary of State William F. Galvin's office include registrations recorded through Oct. 17, the deadline to register to vote in Tuesday's election.

In the two months before the deadline, the number of registered voters in Worcester County jumped from 502,176 to 517,604, an increase of 3 percent.

Councilor-at-Large Joseph C. O'Brien, a longtime Democratic activist and campaign strategist, attributed much of the jump to the close race for U.S. Senate between incumbent Republican Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren.

“There's been a very strong and concerted effort to register new voters,” Mr. O'Brien said. “The Warren campaign hired multilingual staff people to do outreach to people of color. I also think it reflects some of the energy around the campaign with President Obama, Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown as well all running aggressive campaigns.”

In Worcester, Mr. O'Brien also chalked up some of the increase to growth in the city.

Worcester saw one of the largest percentage increases in new voters in the region at more than 4 percent. The ranks of registered voters in the city hit six figures, growing from 99,564 to 103,767 over the two-month period.

Newly registered Democrats accounted for nearly half of the city's total increase, while Republicans picked up 158 new registered voters here. There was a smattering of third-party registrations, while slightly more than 2,000 of the city's new registrants chose not to enroll in any party.

Joshua D. Meduna, Worcester's assistant director of elections, said a late uptick in registered voters is typical of presidential election years.

“There were lots of people and groups out registering new voters and voter registration drives on campuses,” Mr. Meduna said.

At the College of the Holy Cross, for example, student groups supporting both parties came together to organize a voter registration drive in recent months.

“The first and most important thing is that students know they have the right to vote here in Massachusetts,” said student organizer Neema Hakim, a junior majoring in political science and philosophy. “The effort has been really coordinated here at Holy Cross, and I imagine it's the same at the other campuses in Worcester.”

Mr. Hakim is on the executive board of the College Democrats group at Holy Cross, but said the group worked cooperatively with the College Republicans organization and other groups on campus.

“There was one instance where College Democrats and College Republicans were at a table together in the student center giving out information about registration,” he recalled. “The table was buzzing, and students were coming by asking questions. There were a lot of students interested in voting.”

Beyond Worcester, area cities and towns also saw significant increases in voter rolls, according to the data.

Leominster recorded an increase of 852 voters over the last two months, pushing the city's voter rolls up 3.4 percent from 25,425 to 26,277. On a percentage basis, the increase was evenly divided between Republicans, Democrats and unenrolled, with each category getting a bump of about 3 percent.

“First of all, it's a presidential year, but also our state representative race is very active. People have been out working for both candidates,” said Leominster City Clerk Lynn Bouchard.

At the state level, voter registrations increased 161,923 to 4,342,841 from mid-August to mid-October. That works out to an increase of nearly 4 percent. The number of Democrats increased 65,045, to 1,551,693 while the number of Republicans ticked up 12,270 to 484,099. Unenrolled voters grew 84,234 to 2,283,273.